Is Online Voting the Next Big Thing?

Cooper has just posted the first in a series of articles on Elections for UX Magazine. Below is an excerpt from the article “Is Online Voting the Next Big Thing” written by Chris Calabrese. Check it out and read the full article on UX Magazine.

Even though we live in a digital age, in Election 2016, you won’t be voting for Clinton or Trump via your phone or the web.

You’re probably reading this article from your mobile phone. And with the US primary elections in full swing, there’s a good chance you’re learning about issues and candidates on the web, and sharing your political opinions through social media. Even though we live in a digital age, in Election 2016, you won’t be voting for Clinton or Trump via your phone or the web. Instead, if you go (43% of eligible voters didn’t vote in 2008), you’ll wait on a long line of US citizens to cast your ballot in a number of antiquated ways:

Paper Ballot – 1856

Mechanical Lever Machine – 1892

Optical Scan Ballot – 1962

Punch Card – 1964

Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) Voting Machine – 1974

It’s amazing that the predominant ways we are using today to cast votes in our government elections have remained virtually unchanged through the whole digital age.

So what’s the problem?

In a nutshell, the biggest hurdle to online voting is insufficient security. You may wonder, in a world where billions of dollars of financial transactions occur on a daily basis, why can’t I vote for my government officials online? Unlike a financial transaction, which requires a transparent and auditable process for its security, online voting needs to not only be auditable but also anonymous. These conditions, according to a report published by the Atlantic Council in 2014, are “largely incompatible with current technologies”.

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